A program on MSNBC that ran from 2003-11, then on Current TV from 2011-12.

Introduced as Countdown: Iraq, this hour-long show evolved into an opinionated political program that saw itself as a left-wing foil to Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al. Stories were given in "countdown" order:

"#5" was the night's lead story, invariably a major political story with fifteen minutes or more given to detail and commentary.

"#4" was a slightly shorter political story.

"Oddball": Short segments of weird news, first followed by "Best Persons" (originally called "Top 3 Newsmakers", segment scrapped in 2009), then preceded by the Tweet of the Day (he gave in and joined). Now referred to as "Time Marches On."

"#3" similar in scope to #4. Often, but not always, an under-reported story.

"#2", the night's "Worst Persons in the World", a listing of three people/groups who've done or said something that Olbermann found rather ugly or reprehensible. Briefly suspended a couple of times, once in response to the Jon Stewart "Rally to Restore Sanity" (brought back after a fan poll, with a new "Not Really" graphic) and once in the wake of the Tucson shootings (the show ended on MSNBC shortly afterwards, and Worst Persons was revived on Current). When a Guest Host fills in for Olbermann, there is a short political story instead.

Finally, "#1", usually entertainment news or some other fluff piece. Sometimes this is replaced with a "Special Comment", a rather long diatribe reserved for when someone in (or seeking) a seat of power does or says something Olbermann considered egregiously bad. During the final weeks of the 2008 Presidential Campaign, this became a more regular segment called "Campaign Comment". 2010 introduced "Quick Comments", which were shorter and more frequent and which evolved into "Tea Time". Friday shows sometimes have "Thurber Fridays", a reading of a James Thurber story (sometimes relevant to the week's news, sometimes not).

Not to be confused with Countdown, a long-running British Scrabble-esque Game Show on Channel Four that largely concerns itself with bad puns and inoffensive anecdotes.

In early November 2010, Olbermann came under fire at MSNBC for donating $7,200 to political campaigns without first getting permission from the network. He was suspended indefinitely at first, but following intense controversy the subsequent weekend it was announced that he would be reinstated after only two broadcasts.

Suddenly, and without warning, Countdown was canned on January 21, 2011 and Olbermann left the network. He then joined Current Media, and Countdown relaunched on Current TV on June 20th.

On March 30, 2012, Olbermann was fired from Current TV. Legal action happened, and was settled just before Current was bought by Al Jazeerra to launch Al Jazeerra America.

On July 17, 2013, Olbermann re-joined ESPN and launched a new late-night sports-based show titled Olbermann on August 26 on ESPN 2. In early 2015, Olbermann made a series of tweets disparaging Penn State University students involved in a cancer benefit for remaining at the school in light of the Jerry Sandusky scandals. ESPN briefly suspended him from the show, and he made an on-air apology upon his return.

Also, rumored unease from higher-ups at ESPN over Olbermann increasingly taking Countdown-style shots on-air, particularly at the NFL (of which it has a deal that runs through 2019 worth over $15 billion) of its poor treatment of players with football-induced brain injury and of how it has handled players charged with domestic violence - moved ESPN in late 2014 to cut the show to a half-hour and move its timeslot from 11PM to 5PM. In the summer of 2015, news leaked that the network was going to pass on renewing Olbermann's contract. Olbermann signed off on July 24th, 2015 after a little over two years on the air. ESPN maintains the move was not over content but that the cost of the show was prohibitively expensive.

Also he was simultaneously amused and bemused by the Saturday Night Live parody of him done by Ben Affleck, and was reportedly actually sad that Affleck avoided interacting with him when invited to appear on Rachel Maddow's show. Apparently Affleck was afraid Olbermann would be upset, but he actually wanted to offer some friendly constructive criticism and advice to Affleck for any future parodies of Countdown.

"I don't even own a cat."

Backhanded Apology: He did this in his statement on Twitter about his firing from Current TV:

"I'd like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV."

Berserk Button: Hard to pick just one. Keith is infamous for his bad temper and perfectionism, which has cost him a lot of friendships. He gets worked up about pretty much everything, from bad plays in a baseball game to horrible political scandals, which sometimes makes it difficult to take all of his anger seriously.

Big Good: To Keith, he may have at one point seen Barack Obama this way, but Obama turned out to be too centrist on economic matters for Keith. Better examples of people he would see as a Big Good would be Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, and Elizabeth Warren.

He railed at Obama too in Special Comments, mostly about his kowtowing to the right re his handling of health care and the budget crisis.

On the ESPN show: "First, the miscreants, losers, and riff-raff, the unwashed and the unloved...don't take it completely seriously, I don't mean it completely literally...we just call them...tonight's Worst Persons in the Sports World."

And at the end of the segment: "(worst person) (some final pithy comment) tonight's Worst Person(s) in the Sports World!" (paper toss)

And that's Countdown for tonight, the xxxxth day since President Bush declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq. Good night and good luck. ("...the previous President declared..." since January 20, 2009)

And that's Countdown for tonight, the xxxxth day since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. MR. BOEHNER, WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

Give yourself a round of applause for getting through another day of this crap.

I've done all the damage I can do here.

Good Night, and Good Luck. note Respectfully appropriated from Edward R. Murrow.

Never get into a war of words with people who buy ink by the barrelnote Used when someone ended up being taken to the woodshed by a reporter or columnist.

Go forth and spread beauty and light. note Respectfully appropriated from his high school English teacher Arthur Naething after he died.

Clip Show: A couple were done, mostly when his father was in the hospital, and at least one hour-long episode of his Special Comments. Also, the obligatory "Best of the Year" reels for the holidays.

Deadpan Snarker: Newsweek editor Richard Wolffe, who showed up just so Olbermann could set him up to snark on the GOP.

Keith himself, in many of the "Worst Person" segments and some of the lighter Special Comments, particularly the Campaign Comments. Certainly his "Thanks, Dick" and Rocket-powered Rollerskates lines qualified as snark, as was the reaction to Doug Feith's Pre-war consequences memo.

This attitude also leads to nicknames for the Fox News Channel and his right-wing rivals (see "Detractor Nickname" below) and the occasional indulgence in a mocking/sarcastic Evil Laugh when the right wing accuses the left one of something particularly supervillain-ish.

Depth Deception: In Real Life. The reason Keith doesn't drive is that he hit his head on a subway door, and now has no depth perception when moving over 15 mph.

Drinking Game: Take one shot every time he calls someone a "racist" during a show, and you'll end up quite drunk.

When Keith was suspended in November 2010 for not clearing campaign contributions with the network, right-wing pundits Jonah Goldberg and William Kristol and recently fired CNN newsman Rick Sanchez, all of whom Olbermann has had on his Worst Persons list, actually defended Olbermann and attacked MSNBC for the policy.

During the Current version of the show, he also added "Congratulations for getting through another day of this crap." During the earlier days of the MSNBC version, it was "That's Countdown, thanks for being a part of it."

Keith once used footage from CSPAN with cursing senators as justification for showing the footage uncensored — since they can't exactly go after him for showing live footage of the United States Senate, even if they're cussing left and right.

He expressed sheer joy that the new British government included a guy called Ed Balls and mentioned his name as often as possible that segment.

Olbermann no doubt greatly regrets that he was on vacation when the Tea Party first came to national prominence, and missed out on participating in the initial MSNBC barrage of "teabagging" jokes.

At Current, Keith is a bit more unbridled and has taken to saying "God damn" a lot.

Godwin's Law: Is no stranger to comparing certain people he disagrees with to Nazis and Fascists, in fact he does uses this quite a lot, once calling President Bush a 'Fascist' after he commuted Scooter Libby's sentence during a Special Comment, and he's done this to a lot of people he's criticized.

This came to its logical conclusion when Bill did a whole segment with Bernie Goldberg on Keith getting fired, without once using his name.

Homage: Keith uses Edward R. Murrow's sign-off in homage; also, the theme is a remix of Beethoven's 9th, 2nd movement, which was the theme of The Huntley-Brinkley Report (precursor to NBC Nightly News). He also reads a story from James Thurber to end the week after his late father and Thurber's daughter asked him to.

The "Worst Person in the World" concept was lifted from an old Bob & Ray routine of the same name, originally aimed at a critic who had given their stage show a vicious review, along with George Carlin's joke about how, through a process of ranking, there has to be a worst doctor in the world, and, what's even more frightening, "someone has an appointment to see him tomorrow!"

I Always Wanted to Say That: On one Oddball segment about the birth of a baby elephant, he says "I always wanted to do this" and then shows the footage of the elephant walking with its mother while playing Baby Elephant Walk.

Informed Ability: Any clip on YouTube titled "Keith Olbermann DESTROYS [insert Fox News commentator here]!!!" is usually too short and petty to be all that devastating.

Sometimes substituted with other music that he considers thematically appropriate to whatever offense the "winner" committed. This is a recent trend for "Worst Persons" that Olbermann considers to have done something genuinely bad, but not egregious enough to forgo comedy altogether. For example, when Rupert Murdoch is the day's Worst Person (not an uncommon occurrence), he plays the Imperial March. (See Detractor Nickname section above for the context.)

Pet the Dog: Despite his despise of Republicans, he seems sometimes to have a relative soft spot for his ex, Laura Ingraham, despite her being O'Reilly's replacement host. He once compared her favorably to Glenn Beck and Brian Kilmeade on a "worst persons" segment they shared together saying, among other things, she wasn't an idiot. They still attack each other, but he sometimes doesn't seem to despise her as much as most of most of his political opposites, and he also condemned Ed Schultz on Twitter for calling her a "right-wing talk slut". Note that this did not once stop him from saying she "hated the troops".

The Rival: O'Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, Murdoch, Bush, Cheney, Palin, Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Levin, Gibson, and Coulter are the biggest. Sometimes it seems reciprocated, sometimes not; O'Reilly acts aloof and tries not to give him the time of day, Beck, Levin, Gibson, and Coulter make fun of him frequently, and the others are somewhere in the middle on that.

Scandalgate: Every story in the (now retired) "Bushed" and "Still Bushed" segments and several others outside it, often to the point of (intentional) ridiculousness.

Self-Deprecation: When Bill O'Reilly circulated a petition to have him fired, Olbermann promptly signed the petition himself on-air, and got the hosts of all the other MSNBC shows to do the same.

He's also named himself the Bronze in "Worst Person in the World" a couple of times after making a particularly bad on-air error.

Having a Worst Person in the World every single episode seems to lampshade Olbermann's Large Ham tendencies, and on one occasion (after the Jon Stewart lampoon mentioned under Take That), he placed himself on that list, and has done so a few other times as well.

In the aftermath of his November 2010 suspension, Keith was visibly sheepish during his return to the show, and started the first episode after his return with a remark to the effect of, "I'd have expected viewers' vocal support and cheering to be directed to other high profile figures, like Chilean miners!" in-effect claiming he didn't deserve to be cheered on so loudly (it also was only a week, if that long, after the successful rescue of the Chilean copper miners who had been trapped underground for 68 days).

Take That: The purpose of the "Worst Persons in the World" segment, which went temporarily defunct after Jon Stewart's rally made him realize the segment had become a platform for anger rather than satire as originally intended. Also the recipient of a pretty great one from Ben Affleck on an episode of Saturday Night Live. And about as good a one from Jon Stewart.

10-Minute Retirement: His indefinite suspension for making political donations without asking permission ended up lasting a total of two days.

Torches and Pitchforks: He would introduce "Worst Persons" with "Get out your pitchforks and torches", and the title of his recent book, a collection of special comments, worst persons, etc., is Pitchforks and Torches. Funnily enough, many of the people named in this segment are being criticized because he thinks they're using violent imagery in invective.

Viewers Are Morons: Replacing "Worst Person in the World" with "Worst Person in the World (Not Really)," which was meant to become something less strong, as though all objections were from people taking the blatant hyperbole seriously.

Who Writes This Crap?!: Several times, but the August 2, 2010 Oddball segment had Keith catching a factual error in a story about a giant sandwich, causing him to mutter under his breath "That's not Latin America, who wrote this?"

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